Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are. – Joan Didion “Los Angeles Notebook”

UPDATE: I was wondering what other literary references there are to the Santa Anas. Here’s one response via Twitter:

@WitnessLA says: This may be too late, but Randy Newman in “I Love LA,” Bret Easton Ellis in “Less Than Zero.”